During the second half of the nineteenth century, the firm of michael welte und söhne in freiburg-im-breisgau, southern germany, achieved world renown as a manufacturer of orchestrions. Over several decades it built up a skilled workforce, both for the construction of the instruments and for the arrangement of the music rolls which caused them to play. So in 1904, it was ideally placed to develop an experimental piano playing device, with the aim of reproducing the recorded performances of the finest pianists of the day. What we now know as the welte-mignon was originally called, quite simply, the mignon, an essentially french word meaning both small and pleasing, to distinguish it from the firm's other instruments, which were all considerably larger. Http://www. Pianola. Org/reproducing/reproducing_welte. Cfm. Pianist: eugen d'albert (1864 - 1932)instrument: deutsches musikautomaten museum bruchsal (germany). Recording: tascam hd-p2 and beyerdynamic mce82soundsystem: pro tools le. .
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